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General discussion

Dual hard drive install

by dcummings May 16, 2005 3:36AM PDT

So I went to turn on my computer and it went to the apparently common "system32\hal.dll is corrupt/missing, please reinstall" message. I am thinking about getting a hard drive out of one of my older computers, putting it in my new computer, formatting and putting the OS on that disk as the master, and setting the other drive as the slave. Then I could access the files I need on the new computer, and also having Windows on its own disk would prevent future data loss. Any ideas on how this will work? I have tried other ways to restore my current setup, but nothing worked.

Dave

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3 Posts
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Should work
by Yew May 16, 2005 4:15AM PDT

Just so long as you don't try and bring over an existing Windows install.

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I hope so
by dcummings May 16, 2005 4:23AM PDT

I don't want to lose my 35 gigs of music and 1000s of digital pictures. So I'll just load in the 4 gig drive (from the old computer) and take out the 250 gig and run a Windows install, and then once that system is up and running I will shut down and put the all-important 250 gig in as a slave and start to retrieve my files. When done, I will probably reformat the important 250 drive and reinstall my programs, leaving the setup as Windows being installed on the old 4 gig and my programs/ other important stuff on the 250 gig, and if I ever have a problem again, having Windows on its own disk will keep me safe from data loss.

Unless I am missing something here, it seems simple enough. Any other feedback I receive will help me out immensely, as I am new to this building/ repairing PCs world.

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Slave/ Master
by dcummings May 16, 2005 5:26AM PDT

So will I just set the little 4 Gig that will house Windows XP to "Master" and the bigger 250 gig that I will add once the system is stable to "slave"? And does it matter which end of the cable each drive gets? The ribbon cable has one end with the mobo connector and one end with a connector half way up and another at the end. Can these each go anywhere or is one set for the master and one for slave? And will I need to set up RAID or can I just run them as separates?

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